Category Archives: television

Influential 80s movies (13 Days of Halloween)

John Landis wrote and directed American Werewolf in London, which wowed audiences with it’s amazing effects (Oscar win for Rick Baker), humor, gore, sex, and more gore. It’s pretty dated now and the effects don’t stand the test of time, but the movie is still funny, goofy fun. The soundtrack remains amusing, it’s chock full of songs that make reference to the moon – “Moondance”, “Bad Moon Rising,” multiple versions of “Blue Moon.”

Next up was 90210. I had to know if Naomi ended up doing time after getting caught with Adrianna’s stash. Plus, I needed the dish about Silver and Dixon’s date last week. And what about Teacher Ryan pining away for Guidance Counselor Kelly while Youngish Allegedly-Hip Principal Dipshit figures out what to do about his own problem. Namely that he never knew he had a love-child from his teen romance with Adrianna’s mom 18 years ago. She so kept the baby. Except then she gave the baby up. Plus, even if an episode is boring, you can always count on Jessica Walter showing up and having an excellent Lucille Bluth moment because that’s who she’s basically playing.

Then it was time for A Nightmare on Elm Street, which I realized I’d never seen before. It was kind of boring and very 1984. At first that seemed appropriate because I’m finishing the cuff of a purple sweater dress I just made that’s a wee bit 80s, but then it started to make me sleepy so I put it (the movie, not the dress) on the backburner and watched James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein instead. I have a truly fab Bride wig and costume, maybe I’ll wear it Friday while I hide in the basement from Trick-or-Treaters and conclude the film fest.

Pushing Daisies & True Blood

The upside to not feeling well all weekend was that I got plenty of time to watch the whole first season of Pushing Daisies, which looks amazing on DVD. It’s only three discs, so I got them from Netflix instead of buying them, but I suspect I’m going to end up buying them anyway.

I also watched the first five episodes of True Blood, which is, not to put too fine a point on it, simply meh.

True Blood sorely lacks the kooky charms of the books and tries too hard to be “edgy” or “gritty” or some such buzzword. It also commits the cardinal sin of trying too damned hard to portray a blue collar Southern town and it’s inhabitants, particularly folks living on the sharp edge of poverty. The whole thing has an overdone quality that kinda screams, “I saw poor people once. In a movie.”

I think the set designers need to follow some variation on the Coco Chanel rule. No, not consort with Nazis – remove the last accessory you put on after you’ve finished getting dressed.

The characterizations aren’t half-bad, although the actor playing the Jason, the slutty brother, needs to turn down his redneck emoting about 6 notches. Otherwise, he’s pretty amusing. I don’t buy Anna Paquin as Sookie, but for the sake of the show I guess she’s okay. I don’t know that I’ll watch any more episodes, but maybe I’ll let Tivo keep collecting them for the next time my innards decide to knock my feet out from under me. If I was being picky, I’d point out that the show oughta be called TruBlood, after the synthetic blood substitute at the center of the show/books premise.

I also don’t have a single unread New Yorker in my house. When I first gathered them all and started going through them, I fell asleep and woke up the next morning in what looked like a rather pretentious nest. I soldiered on and got through them all. Our recycling is going to way a ton this week. Alright, yes, I do have a file of articles I ripped out to read later, but I don’t believe that counts.

So, um, that’s all the excitement here. I got out Galactica 1980, but didn’t watch it. Didn’t seem right to venture into that territory without backup, and Husband has been in San Francisco hanging with this rough crowd.

gettin' meta with martha

(sorry for all of the revisions, the typos in this post were legion)

I must blog about a recent Martha Stewart Show episode. It wasn’t just any episode, it was The Blogging Show, wherein she had guest bloggers blogging on their blogs throughout the show while the whole studio audience of bloggers blogged along on their laptops and Martha said the words blog, blogging and bloggers so many times that my giggles started to edge around on the borderlands of hysteria.

Actual Martha pronouncement at the top of the show, as she surveyed the studio audience: “What an array of laptops you all have!” It was delivered in her precise way, “What. An array. Of laptops. Youallhave.”

Oh, Martha, bless your soul. Prison may have mellowed you out, but it could never take away your clipped and awkward phrasing.

Martha had her two blog managers, her sister Laura and Elliot Laskin, in the audience. They were a’ bloggin’. She also had special guest bloggers strewn around the set, including Perez Hilton, to whom Martha demonstrated that she can pronounce Cuba properly.

Oh, Martha.

Martha and Perez told us how to become rich and famous with our blogs. Martha explained that “blog” comes from the words “web” and “log.” Martha gave the studio audience books that have been published from blogs, to taunt them as they toil in semi-obscurity, bloggity-blog-blogging their lives away.

Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin (Politico), Margaret Roach (A way to garden, Matt Armendariz (Matt Bites, and Deb Perelman (Smitten Kitchen also got down with their bad blog selves in little segments with Martha.

To be fair, Martha stated outright when she introduced Meg Frost (Cute Overload) that it was Meg’s site that drew huge traffic to Martha’s site and not the other way around. Then Martha baked Meg into a pie and fed her to the studio audience of hungry bloggers.

That last part but may not have really happened, my mind started to wander.

What I learned is this: blogging is now officially over. You may now go on about your day.

On a sidenote: Martha encouraged everyone to buy a Canon G9 to carry around with them all the time. I bought one at the beginning of the year and I really have a love/hate relationship with this camera. It’s an excellent camera, but I’m not sure I’d recommend that anyone buy one at this point unless you really want RAW files and manual controls, but still want a camera that’s a point and shoot and not an actual DSLR. It’s heavy and it’s very slow. The Powershot SD990 will be out soon and, if it’s anything like the previous powershots I’ve owned, it will blow the G9 out of the water in terms of speed and size. Don’t get me wrong, I like my camera, but for candid snaps? Not the best.